Cummings, scheming to seize control of the city government, had
tempted him and he had fallen. He sold himself to the boss of the
underworld and became perfidious and a puppet so that he might have
money and fame while it lasted.

How Gibson suffered by comparison with the example set by Consuello!
When the vast wealth that had once been the Carrillo's dwindled and only
the few acres of land with the old home was left, she went to work and
was loved and respected for what she had done. She had not lost caste by
her venture into worldly affairs. That was where Gibson had been
short-sighted. He had believed that he would lose standing if he was
forced to work for a living; so he took the easier way and like all
easier ways, it wrought destruction of his morals, his conscience and
his reputation.

From this retrospective philosophizing with the lesson that it taught,
John turned to dreaming of Consuello as the one he loved. His
imagination, from which he slipped the leash of worry and care, pictured
for him gloriously delightful, utterly impossible scenes--Consuello and
he on a yacht skimming the rolling waves of the ocean off Catalina,
leisurely inspecting some "gabled foreign town"; she another Princess
Patricia with "silken gowns" and "jewels for her hair," loving and
wedding him, a "commoner" like the real princess' husband, despite the
frowns of kings and queens, and settling down to rule a Graustark-like
little kingdom.

When he awoke the following morning a hospital attendant brought him his
suit, cleaned and pressed, with a new shirt and collar which, he
learned, had been left for him by Brennan. His head had ceased its
aching and after breakfast he could only feel a trace of the weakness
that had caused him to faint the night before.

As he entered the local room of the newspaper office P. Q. stopped work
to rush toward him and Brennan, looking up from his typewriter, emitted
a "rousing" cheer.

CHAPTER XXIII

All that day the giant presses roared, turning out thousands upon
thousands of the newspapers with the story stripping the mask off Gibson
and revealing the nefarious plot between him and "Gink" Cummings. All
day long delivery trucks piled high with bundles of the papers
distributed them to newsboys in the downtown district and throughout the
city. Never in the history of Los Angeles had there ever been such a
tremendous single-day issue of a newspaper.

Under the glaring headlines was Bento